History

Andy Martin

Andy Martin was a medical student at Tulane University who spent the last year of his life trying to
culture SNUC cells from his own tumor. Andy died in November of 2004 while his heroic effort was still a
work in progress.

Andrei Makovik

Andrei Makovik was a software designer and computer programmer from Minsk, Belarus. He moved to Ann
Arbor with his family in 1994 and was employed in the Information Technology department at Cayman. In
November 2004, when he was 37, it was discovered that he had a large, invasive tumor of the nasal
sinuses eroding upward through the cribriform plate. He underwent a subcranial resection of
undifferentiated high-grade cancer of the right nasal cavity and anterior cranial fossa in January 2005.
He subsequently underwent chemotherapy with Cisplatin (40 mg/m², 6 weekly sessions) and radiation
therapy (24 5-days-a-week sessions). He was symptomatically and radiographically free of disease until
October of 2005, when several foci of recurrent tumor where found on MRI, mainly growing in the dura.

A biopsy of one tumor from the right parietal dura was obtained by craniotomy on November 9, 2005. The
2.5 × 3 cm specimen was divided into 18 samples and distributed between University of Michigan
Pathology, Cayman Biochemistry, and the National Cancer Institute. An intensive study of this biopsy
specimen is the objective of the SNUCK-Works Team.

Following his relapse, Andrei received additional whole-head radiation therapy up to the therapeutic
maximum dosage. He was further treated with oral thalidomide combination chemotherapy and continued to
be active and feel reasonably well until March 2006, when MRI scans showed continued slow expansion of
the brain metastases. All treatment was discontinued, and his functional status deteriorated rapidly
soon thereafter. Andrei died of respiratory arrest on May 11, 2006.